Monday, April 24, 2017

Let me count the names

Can you think of any physical disease where people might have insults hurled at them just because they had the physical disease? I certainly can’t. People would think it cruel and unkind, yet it’s okay for people with mental illness to be insulted and derided. It’s even called ‘joking’ by some. The sheer amount of insults hurled at anyone who has a mental illness speaks for itself, this is a short list and it’s only in English. The name calling and consequent shaming, illustrates the fear and ignorance of mental illness (or indeed any condition related to mind and brain health such as intellectual disabilities) is still alive and kicking. Ask anyone how the stigma affects their day to day life and unfortunately, they and their families will have plenty of stories.

In the case of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (formerly known as manic depression), people are/were called schizophrenic and manic depressive, which I think is absolutely appalling. I can think of only one physical disease in which that happens which is diabetes, people who have this condition are often referred to as diabetics. Are people their illness now, is there nothing else to them except the illness?

Many so-called mental disorders are actually caused by trauma. Just imagine stigmatising someone because they’ve been through tough times? Hard to believe that that could happen isn’t it? But maybe that’s because many people haven’t made the link between adverse experiences and poor mental health. They might still believe the outdated claim that it’s a “chemical imbalance”. So where does the chemical imbalance originate from then? You’ll get very few satisfactory answers to that simple question in mainstream medicine. Or maybe it’s because the shame of mental illness goes so deep that we prefer to deflect and project our fears that it could be us onto others. Name calling, it’s sad to say, is only part of the stigma, discrimination in all its different forms can really inflict untold suffering.

Another major cause of mental illness is inflammation, especially in our gut which is intimately tied to our brain, the health of our gut affects our brain’s health and vice versa. And what is one of the biggest sources of inflammation? Stress; biological, emotional, environmental etc. So traumatised people are especially vulnerable to any chronic disease, both mental and physical, because their stress levels are usually high, as the ACE study and many other studies have showed.

I have never heard someone with schizophrenia say “I am schizophrenic”, instead they usually say “I have schizophrenia”, it’s others who usually refer to them as schizophrenics, and surprisingly a lot of them are mental health professionals. Leaving space for who you are beyond any diagnosis or label is crucial. This isn’t about being politically correct, as that terrain is always changing, it’s about how we see people who are suffering with mental health issues and how they feel as a result. And more importantly, how they feel as a result of how they see themselves.

When I’m tapping, I often use ‘I am’ and ‘I feel’ sentences which I find really useful. Take the statements, I am bad or I feel bad, for example. Feeling bad is (hopefully) temporary, whereas I am bad, is permanent. It’s a belief, a “truth”, but not “the” truth. It’s always good to differentiate between ‘I feel’ and ‘I am’.

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